Oklahoma!

 

Release Date: October 11, 1955

Watch Date: March 1 - March 3, 2023

"There's a box social coming up, and Curly (Gordon MacRae) asks Laurey (Shirley Jones) if she'll be his date. Trouble is, Laurey thinks he's waited too long, and in a fit of pique accepts an offer from the boorish Jud (Rod Steiger) instead. Meanwhile, Laurey's friend Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame) is also torn between two men: a cowboy named Will (Gene Nelson) and a foreign peddler, Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert). Both women struggle to know their own hearts before it's too late."

    Finally, a musical!

    Now is it the best musical in the world? No. But it is a classic? I mean, who doesn't know Oklahoma's OK?

    Bob. The answer is Bob.

    But you know what? He gave it the old college try. He really did. And he didn't immediately dismiss it, which I was halfway expecting. He gave it an honest shot, and I don't think he totally hated it. Not completely anyways.

    Ado Annie drove him insane. Slut shaming is tasteless now, and it's pretty bad to see it be a major plot point in a film. I get that she's meant to be the contrast to the perfect and virginal Laurey, but poor Ado Annie deserves more than two dudes who mostly want her for sex. I will admit that Will at least seems a little more genuine but...I don't know, every scene she in feels icky.

    "The Foreigner" Ali Hakim, is of course played by a white man putting on a ridiculous accent, but there are white foreigners, so you can't get too upitty. I'm not really sure what country he's meant to be from either, so at least it's so vague you can't get offended. It's nice to not be offended by the portrayal of a person from a different country at this point in the marathon.

    The dream ballet is where I lost Bob, and I knew that was going to happen. The ballet loses me at the best of times. I get the purpose of a dream sequence and seeing into Laurey's psyche, but man does it go on for just so much longer than it needed to.

    But Bob stuck it out, though we did have to take a break after the dream ballet because he simply couldn't. I don't blame him. That part gets hard even for me. He bopped his head along to 'The Farmer and the Cowboy' and I'm almost positive he was humming along to the titular 'Oklahoma' at the end.

    I do feel a little bad for Jud? I mean, he was clearly a bullied man who people thought less of for no apparent reason, except for Aunt Eller (arguably the best character in the entire film). Was he creepy? Sure. But creepy isn't a crime. He gets a lot worse as the film goes on though, and he does actually attempt to murder Curly and Laurey, which isn't great. Still, the man probably deserved a little more justice than a rushed murder trial in a kitchen before a honeymoon. It's not like he's completely unprovoked. Curly goes into his house and basically sings a song to him about how much better it would be if he were dead, in a mocking way because he believes no one would miss him. I mean, the dude just had a crush on the same girl as you Curly, you didn't have to be so mean.

    Like I said at the beginning of this, Oklahoma! has it's faults. It's not the best musical in the world, and with the way musicals have evolved over the decades it definitely feels like a relic of the past - but that doesn't make it bad. Everything has it's origin story, and without musicals like Oklahoma! to pave the way we wouldn't have ended up with Wicked, or Hamilton. So it's good to show some deference to your elders. Now, do I think I will ever be able to entice Bob to watch this again? It's extremely unlikely. But he's done it once, and for the purposes of this marathon, once is enough.